What Does a Medical Assistant Do?
A Day in the Life of a Medical Assistant
Are you interested in training for a career as a medical assistant, but you’re not sure what this career is really like or if it’s right for you? If you are considering training for a career as a medical assistant, you probably want to learn more about what you can expect from this career path. Read on to learn more about what a medical assistant does, what a day in the life of a medical assistant is like, and how you can train for this rewarding career path in as few as 34 weeks with Integrity College of Health.
What Does a Medical Assistant Do?
Working in the offices of physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare facilities, medical assistants play a vital role in the healthcare field. Medical assistants complete both administrative and clinical tasks, and act as a patient coordinator by providing a means of communication between patients, doctors and other health care providers. Medical assistants provide hands-on care, working alongside doctors to provide patients with the highest level of care.
What Is a Medical Assistant Career Like?
To get an idea of what a medical assisting career is really like, put yourself inside the shoes of a medical assistant as they go about their busy workday. Here’s what a day in the life of a medical assistant looks like:
You arrive at the office and start your day by logging into the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system, and then checking for any phone messages and emails. Next, you organize the charts and fill out any paperwork needed for the day, such as surgical permission forms, health check forms and insurance paperwork. Then you review the patient schedule for the day, and prepare the exam rooms for the first appointments.
Patients begin to arrive for scheduled appointments, so you have to work efficiently to keep things flowing smoothly. If you’re working in the front of the office, you check patients in for their appointment, verify their information and health insurance, and ask them to fill out any appropriate forms.
If you’re working on the clinical side, you greet the patient and take him or her to an exam room. Then, you take their vital signs, perform a patient interview, and prepare them for any scheduled procedures. You may also need to provide medication or an injection, or collect and prepare a specimen for laboratory testing.
Your day is busy, with appointments often just 15 minutes apart. When there is time in between patients, you update patient charts using the electronic health portal, which you also use to correspond via email, share and explain test results, schedule and follow up on appointments, send necessary forms, and more.
After every patient visit, you clean up the exam room by wiping everything down, putting everything away, and bringing specimens down to the lab. If it’s an urgent lab sample, you make sure it gets down to the lab in a timely fashion, and you check to make sure the results come in quickly to the office’s printer or EMR system. It’s your responsibility to make sure those results get to the patient’s medical provider promptly, so the provider can relay those results to the patient.
During your fast-paced day you also handle prescription refills through the pharmacy, faxing them over and verifying that the pharmacy received them. It’s your responsibility to ensure the practice is following the rules about certain types of medications – particularly narcotic prescriptions, so you make sure the office is in compliance with the rules.
At the end of your day, you help clean and re-stock the exam rooms for the next day. In a career as fast-paced as this one, good organization skills, patience, stamina and a love for the job are all important qualities.
Is a Medical Assistant Career Right for Me?
If the life of a medical assistant sounds interesting to you, consider training for this stimulating and rewarding career with ICH! Integrity College of Health, in Pasadena, Ca. ICH offers a Medical Assistant program that can prepare you to enter this career path in as few as 34 weeks! Students at ICH benefit from a hybrid-online learning model that combines hands-on instruction with online theory coursework – empowering you to gain the essential skills you need for your new career in a flexible way that works for your busy schedule.
Train for Your Medical Assistant Career, with ICH College in Pasadena, Ca.!
If you are ready to take the first step towards your medical assisting career, consider training with ICH! With ICH’s hybrid, hands-on, and online classes, you can train to enter this rewarding career path in as few as 34 weeks! With ICH, you can learn the necessary administrative and clinical skills for employment as a medical assistant. Integrity College of Heath, in Pasadena, California, is an excellent choice for your healthcare career training. Call us at 626-808-0215 or contact us here to get started today.